Turmoil: The Awakening
by Dark Seroph
Summary: The hands of the clock have started ticking, and it’s not only Satoshi that has to worry about impending oblivion when the final bell tolls. Daisuke and Dark are two halve of the same whole, but what happens if they merge? Warning: Possible Spoilers!
1. Warning about a Shadow and Free Time

_I remember, clear as day, the first time that I had suspected that something was about to go wrong. Horribly, terribly wrong…_

"Dark? Why so quiet?" Daisuke asked, staring blankly at his ceiling, as the sky outside became a darker shade of blue. It was probably around midnight now, and the phantom thief and his teen tamer were relaxing after a hard night of stealing yet another piece to add to the massive collection in the catacombs downstairs.

"_It's nothing Daisuke… Go to sleep."_ Dark replied with a slightly annoyed tone. Mentally, he could picture the phantom thief rolling over on his other side and putting his back to the boy.

"…Alright… If you say so…" The redhead sighed, the casual deflection of his question doing nothing to put his mind at ease. All the same, if the moody thief didn't want to talk, he wasn't going to talk and that was that.

_Well, of course Dark wasn't all right! Whenever he wasn't commenting about my screw-ups of the day-mostly concerning Riku- or gloating over his latest brilliant move that got them out of some impossible situation, something was wrong with him. I didn't find out what the problem was soon enough though…_

~*~*~*~*~

A shadow within shadows, vaguely human in form, made a ghostly advance through the wide halls with its high ceilings. Paintings from ages past lined the walls, all of them behind glass and some roped off to prevent small children from getting their hands all over. A patch of unavoidable light crossed the phantom's path, and he stepped through it without a sound or break in stride. Long purple-black hair and slanted lavender eyes were framed in possibly one of the most handsome faces known to the entire world. The famous phantom thief Dark was on the prowl again, at the moment unhindered by poorly placed traps or incompetent security guards.

Though his stride seemed confident and completely unconcerned of the possible danger, those lavender eyes were always scanning. Looking for the occasional well-placed trap, a security guard disguised as a marble statue, and most importantly, Hiwatari. Daisuke, content to simply watch from the recesses of Dark's consciousness, was only half-aware of their surroundings. He was more focused on the actual item that they were here to steal. The Gate of Fear, a piece that had only been at this particular museum for a week and a half before the warning notice had been given. Though its properties were little known, it's affects were apparently a force to be reckoned with. In the week and a half that the palm-sized artwork had been on display, several people had been admitted to the hospital because of a sudden and unexplained unconsciousness. Coincidence? The Niwa's thought not. It was yet another story of a Hikari monster on the loose that needed to be sealed as soon as possible.

"You're much too serious, Daisuke. Relax a little! If you keep being so tense every time we have to go steal something, you're going to loose all your hair before you're twenty." Dark said jovially, a wide grin across his face as he continued at the same careless stride he had set since he'd dropped down through a panel in the ceiling a few yards back.

"_Dark! You say the same thing every time. Let up, will you?"_ Daisuke replied, getting a little irritable now. On nights like these when the action was low, he liked to try and just think about the heist and let Dark do all the physical work. Most of the time, that thinking lead to how it seemed that most of the Hikari works they'd run into possessed human feelings and often took human form. Was it fair to them as thinking beings to destroy them? First it was the Second Hand of Time, then Argentine. He could only imagine what lie in store for them down the road. In theory, they were running out of "easy" pieces to steal, and the getting of these Hikari works only seemed to get more complicated.

The young tamer was suddenly snapped from his musings as he felt his other half stiffen in response to something further down the hall way. _"What is it, Dark?"_ Daisuke asked, all of his senses now concentrated on their surroundings, almost like he was serving as a second set of eyes for the phantom thief.

"I sense magic at work." He hissed in reply, placing one cautious step in front of the other. Suddenly he felt all the hair rise on his body and whirled away in a flurry of dark feathers as the floor exploded where he had been standing seconds before. Chunks of concrete and stone flew in all directions, making the phantom thief raise his arms and cover his face to protect it from the flying debris.

In that moment of blindness, he realized that he wasn't quite safe yet. Instinctively, he ducked and rolled to the side, hitting the floor hard and rolling to his feet further down the hall. His quick actions turned out to be the correct ones, for no sooner had he thrown himself into the roll than a burst of crackling white energy sliced the very air where he had stood.

As the dust cleared, a battle ready Dark was not so surprised to find his long-time nemesis on the other side of the crater in the floor of the museum. "Krad!" He spat, standing from his crouched position, though still ready to dodge another flying ball of energy. "What, no warm up? And here I thought I would have to coax you out of Hiwatari in order to see your lovely face tonight."

A cold laugh emanated from the blonde angelic being, a seductive smile on his face as he regarded his counterpart. "I thought I'd get right to the point tonight and finally just kill you. Do away with all of formalities, you know? I'm not sure how much more embarrassment the police can take."

"How considerate of you." Dark growled back, narrowing his eyes at the dangerous magic user. "However, I've got places to go, people to see. I'd love to stay and chat you know, since we never spend quality time together anymore." Dark smirked, bowing low. As if sensing the imminent escape attempt, Krad yelled out something and hurled a ball of crackling white energy at his dark companion. The magic only passed through Dark, which fizzled to nothingness as the feather creating the illusion sizzled under the hail of the attack.

Dark's laughter came from everywhere in the hall, strangely echoed so that Krad could not determine the origin of his voice. "Seems you're getting slower in your old age, Krad. You haven't quite got that old spark of yours anymore."

"Quit hiding, Dark! Come here and face your punishment like a man!" Krad yelled to the empty air, his head snapping from side to side in an attempt to locate the missing phantom thief.

"Big words, coming from a monster like you." Dark replied, his voice still strangely echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "I'd love to duke it out with you, but I really need to keep my promise and steal The Gate of Fear before the police get smart and smuggle it to another location or something."

"DARK!" Krad screamed in vain, his whole body glowing dangerously with magic. Dark only laughed in reply, before his voice disappeared completely from the hallway.

"_That was far too close!_" Daisuke said, his heart racing from the close encounter. _"I didn't think we'd see Krad here tonight… I hope Hiwatari is doing okay. It's not normal for him to transform so easily."_

"There you go again, worried about the enemy! I just don't get it. Why don't you ever worry about me instead? If I hadn't dodged those attacks, we'd be in some serious trouble right now." Dark replied, sounding more than a little angry at Daisuke at the moment as he ran full pelt down the hall toward where The Gate of Fear was being kept.

Daisuke only sighed in response, having learned that he never got anywhere in these kinds of arguments. He always pulled the "he's my friend!" card, and Dark always replied along the lines of "a friend that wants to blow your head off, yeah!" Really, he just didn't have the mental strength to put up a battle with the thief tonight. Not to mention the fact that they were quickly being put to a do-or-die situation, and mental argument with one's other half tended to distract them from the important tasks at hand.

As they reached the room where The Gate of Fear was being held, Dark slowed in his run, expecting to be greeted with the sight of a few hundred officers. Nimbly he jumped over a few trip wires and withdrew a small device from his pocket. Pressing the singular red button on the device, all the lights in the building shut down while all of the alarms went off, as well as the sprinklers and flashing emergency lights. As expected, a great roar of dismay and alarm kicked up from the human guards in the building as they scrambled to shut off the sprinklers and flashing lights to save the museum from water damage and reduce the strobe light effects they were currently experiencing. In the middle of the mass chaos, Dark easily avoided being knocked over by the frantic officers and swiped the art piece from it's case, invoking some more technical wonders to make the glass case simply lift away.

By the time that all the waterworks and flashing lights had been disabled, The Gate of Fear was long gone and Dark was making his get away through the fire exit to the roof. His brilliant escape was short lived as a section of wall exploded outwards, causing the stairs he was on to buck and sway wildly, nearly knocking the thief over the edge of the railing. Krad again made his appearance, floating effortlessly in the empty air before Dark.

"What's your problem?" Dark yelled, summoning Wiz to become his wings so that he could take flight and get around the severely demented blonde. "Do you plan on blowing up the whole damn museum?"

"No, just the part that gets between you and I." Krad replied with a smirk, his voice only a low seductive purr.

"Well, I guess I'll just have to leave then. I'm more of a heart breaker, not a wall demolisher." Dark said with a cocky grin, lifting away from the ruined staircase with a few powerful strokes of Wiz's large black wings.

Krad rushed forward with a strong flap of his white wings, his right hand glowing with dangerous energy, the bloodlust clearly in his eyes. Dark had to react quickly, managing to flap to the side of the blonde's thrust and grabbed his forearm as he passed, using the momentum to swing him in a wide ark and throw Krad against the wall of the museum. Krad grunted in pain as his short-lived attack came to a very painful conclusion, and it took him a moment to regain his altitude and composure. By the time that he managed to turn around, Dark was making a quick get away through the night sky, heading toward the ocean.

Krad narrowed his eyes at the escaping form, landing on a more solid part of the fire escape stairs. With anger simmering just below the surface, he let his form warp, his exhausted tamer resuming control of their shared body.

Dark sighed, relieved to be home after their little escapade. He flew around a dark part of the town, looking for passerby's before landing at the mouth of a narrow alleyway. He walked though it, and came out the other side as Daisuke, who was indulging in a little irritated tirade. "I mean really! Saehara is probably going to smother me with tonight's story! I can see it now! 'Phantom Thief Turned Vandal At Contemporary Art Museum'. Can you imagine?"

"_I know Daisuke. Next time I see that pretty-boy bastard I'll-"_ Dark conjured up images of Krad being strangled by the phantom thief, and all was well after that.

"Hey, what was the history behind this piece, anyway?" Daisuke asked out loud, getting his first real look at the small artwork. It was a small round looking glass that fit easily in the palm of his hand. A serpent and bird chased each other around the rim, locked forever in golden time. The bird looked so realistic, Daisuke was sure that it would fly right off the mirror any second, and he dared not look too long into the small-carved eyes of the serpent. It was beautiful and frightening at the same time; utterly captivating. He could see why his ancestors had started the business of stealing the Hikari works. They were truly something to be envied.

"_The Gate of Fear, tragic story… But I guess they all have a tragic story don't they?"_ Dark thought as Daisuke continued walking, making a beeline for the house, wary of being seen by any of the locals. _"The artist died as soon as he finished it, victim to his own artwork. You don't get that very often when the Hikari are involved. They usually have a better mastery over their artworks. But, Krad inspired the piece. I'm actually quite amazed that the thing doesn't suck out the soul of anyone who touches it, really. That would be the kind of twisted thing Krad would think up."_ He explained, scoffing at the thought of the artwork's origins.

Daisuke opened the door with a sigh, automatically handing over the small mirror to Argentine, who patiently stood by wearing the ridiculous butler suit that his mother had forced him into. The dark-skinned blonde made a small bow and turned away just as Emiko, squealing with delight at the sight of her returned son, tackled the poor boy, nearly knocking him over.

"Daisuke! How'd it go? Did you run into any trouble? The police were in a flurry on TV, more than usual I mean." Emiko said, turning Daisuke in a full circle to inspect him for any injuries. Daisuke let his frantic mother do the traditional inspection and patiently waited until her assault of questions was done before daring to reply.

"We met Krad." He said without preamble and utterly black faced. His mother's face obviously showed that she didn't quite comprehend what he had said, then suddenly twisted to a horrified expression. She was in panic mode now, and Towa had come to join the fray.

"Did he hurt you? Oh that nasty Krad! If he hurt you I swear-!" Emiko spazzed, now giving Daisuke the full pat down as if searching for a weapon. Towa screeched frantically on the sidelines, as if already mourning Dark's death or something. The phantom thief was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle and Daisuke's general discomfort, which only serve to make the young tamer more irritated.

"I didn't get hurt at all mom. I'm just tired and have homework to do. Can I go now?" Daisuke whined, eager to get out of the slightly baggy black clothing that Dark was oh so fond of whenever he had to go-a-stealing. Without waiting for her to reply, he abruptly turned from their attention and started heading upstairs. Wiz jumped down from his previous perch on the boy's shoulder and scampered into the room, immediately taking his place by the windowsill.

The redhead quickly changed into his pajamas and opened up his school bag, prepared for a hard night of studying. The teacher had been merciless today; completely unforgiving in the amount of work that she had assigned them despite the protest of half the class' female population. Dark was going to be on TV that night! There was no way they'd be able to get so much homework done! But, Dark or no Dark, the learning would just have to painfully resume, as always.

Half-way thought his foreign language homework, an odd thought struck him, and he immediately went and sat in front of his mirror, so that he could talk 'face to face' with Dark. "Hey Dark, you remember the Agate Links, right?"

"_Well yeah. It was with that cute babe… Hino, was it? No, Mina? Menou?"_ Dark asked, having seriously forgotten her name.

"Dark!"

"_Okay okay, yes, I remember. What about it?"_

"Well, the night that we went to go steal it, Hiwatari told me at school that he wouldn't be there because it wasn't a Hikari work. Grandpa told us the same thing; it was never on the family's list of items to steal." Daisuke's mind started working faster than his ability to put it to coherent sentences, so he paused for a little bit, organizing the points of his thoughts.

"_So? What's your point? The poor girl was terminal, so the old man wanted to do something nice for her"_ Dark replied, waving his hand in the air as if waving away a pesky fly.

"The Hikari are the only ones that can breathe life into objects though, right?" Daisuke asked, forgoing all of his planned suspenseful buildup in light of Dark's obvious uncaring.

The phantom thief paused for a long moment, simply staring at the younger boy, seeming to have been thrown slightly off balance by the question. _"I see what you mean. Yeah, as far as I know, there's no other family that can create an object with magical properties like that…"_

"Then how did that girl get stuck in the Agate Links? If a Hikari didn't put some sort of life into it, then how could it have possessed her soul like that? It's not like grandpa gave it to her when she was still alive and she coveted the thing until her dying breath, or anything." Daisuke said, just thinking out loud. "If it wasn't the Hikari, then who was it?"

"_I don't know Daisuke… I think that you should ask Kosuke about it."_ Dark replied, obvious concern etched into his features. _"It's not possible that there's a third family involved with us… Though I hadn't considered that there might be other families cursed by the devil like the Hikari were. Things like that don't just happen all the time."_

"All right, I'll ask him tomorrow…" Daisuke sighed, turning away from the mirror. "Right… back to homework then, I suppose." In all honest though, neither tamer nor thief could concentrate on the task at hand. Somewhere between a third of Pi and the radius of an unknown circle all math related thoughts came to a halt.

Daisuke spent the night face down on his homework sleeping, his dreams disturbed by fits of unknown horrors that flitted in and out of the shadows of his mind.

~*~*~*~*~

The next morning the young redhead woke to the annoying buzz of an alarm and sat up quickly, realizing that he had fallen asleep halfway through his math problems. Crying out in alarm, he threw on all of school clothes within a well-rehearsed chaos, stuffing books and papers into his school bag before heading downstairs. After dodging several hidden lasers in the walls that undoubtedly would drop something heavy on his head once activated he reached the foot of the stairs where he slid down the banister instead of walking down like a normal child, due to the fact that his mother had rigged every other step with some sort of bomb. Once at the bottom of the banister, he had to leap gracefully over the booby-trapped plush rug, avoid slipping on a conveniently placed banana peel and disarmed the brand new lock on the kitchen door in order to reach the table, and by extension, breakfast.

"Good morning Dai sweetie!" Emiko said, cheerfully buttering some toast.

"Morning mom." Daisuke replied with a heavy sigh, absently reaching for an apple on the table. He stopped just short of picking up the fruit, having sensed the extremely high amount of voltage coursing just beneath that delicious looking red skin. Staring at the opposing fruit as if he'd just been subject to one of Takeshi's worst jokes, he slapped his forehead and headed for the cereal instead.

"_Electrified apples? Your mom must be running out of ideas." _Dark muttered, sharing Daisuke's disbelief on the subject. _"I don't know how many apples I've ever been tempted to eat on the job…"_

'She only does this because she loves me… Or something like that.' Daisuke thought back, withdrawing the milk from the fridge, a bowl from the cabinet and some kind of cereal from the cupboard.

"_Well, at the very least, you'll never be surprised by _anything_ that Hiwatari has to throw at you."_ Dark said with a laugh. Upon receiving the equivalent of a mental death glare from Daisuke, he calmed a little bit and resumed with absently grinning. _"Speaking of Hiwatari, don't forget to talk to Kosuke today."_

'Oh, right. Yeah, I'll do it when I come home from school today.' Daisuke replied, absently spooning the cereal into his mouth.

"Oh Daisuke, I forgot to tell you! You can have a little free time this week." Emiko said, much to the shock of her teenaged son. "There are whispers of some new pieces being brought to the Cultural History Museum by the end of the week. Until we know if there's anything worth stealing, you won't be having anything to do."

"Thanks mom!" Daisuke said, truly grateful for the information. It had been a long while since he'd had a week of free time! He could catch up on sleep, and homework and-

"_DAISUKE! You're so lame!"_ Dark screamed, mentally whacking the teen in the back of the head. _"You get a week of freedom, and all you can think about is _homework_?"_

'All-right, Oh Wise One! What _should_ I be thinking about?' Daisuke thought back angrily, shoveling the last of his cereal into his mouth.

An evil cackle emitted from Dark, and Daisuke immediately regretted even asking. _"I can think of a certain young maiden who would be thrilled to spend a week with you!"_ Instantly, images of Riku popped into his head. Of course, the _images _had been altered slightly to fit Dark's sick mind-frame and Riku's school uniform turned into a skin-tight white summer dress, which turned into a much shorter and skimpier black little thing which was quickly warping into-

"DARK!" Daisuke yelled out loud, slamming his bowl on the table and causing his mother to yelp with fright at the sudden outburst. His face was nearly scarlet with embarrassment.

The phantom thief only cackled in the recesses of his mind, ever the little devil of Daisuke's conscious. That Dark was going to kill him one day…

* * *

Alright, so an extremely long chapter to kick off the revamped version of _When the Light is Gone. _Hopefully I'll be able to complete this one within the next couple of months. It's not going to be a very long story (I think), so this should get done pronto. Read and Review, yeah? Let me know how you think it's coming along. (Because I'm biased and think that it's perfect.)

Blanket Disclaimer: I do NOT own DNAngel or any of it's characters. All rights belong to Yukiru Sugisaki, and I am making no money by writing this. Original characters may appear/be mentioned that are not part of the DNAngel series, and are simply figments of my creative whims and do not necessarily reflect on the personal opinions of the original author. In short, this is all in good fun, so nobody sue me! I'll let you know if there's something that appears in my story that I'd like to keep for myself.

**Additional Notice:** My story starts _AFTER_ the Argentine Arc of the story. If you'd like to know what happens after the printed English volume 12 of DNAngel, you should do a little google searching. Anything beyond the Argentine Arc of the story is unknown to me at this point, so sorry if you multi-language peeps already know what's going down in Japanese.


	2. A Warning Concerning Homesecurity

"I'm home!" Daisuke called into the strangely empty foyer of his home, slipping off his shoes at the doorway. Of course, he soon found out why the foyer was empty when the floor dropped away, a pit of spikes at the bottom. Without a second thought, the teen jumped as the floor began to give way, landing on the other side of the chasm in a crouched pose, waiting to leap away from the next trap. When none immediately sprung at him, he looked around, trying to search for the next danger.

He spotted a device of some sort on the ceiling that had been camouflaged to look like a smoke detector. Daisuke glared at the device, trying to figure out what it was. There! It looked like a camera of some sort, probably the newest in laser technology. Taking off his backpack, he sorted through it and grabbed a piece of notebook paper, made it into an airplane and tossed it. As soon as it came within range, the laser fried it.

"Oh goodie." Daisuke grumbled, rummaging around in his backpack a little more. He found a pencil and broke it in half, then took aim at the device. With surprising strength and accuracy, he threw the half bit of pencil at the laser lodging it between the moving part of the camera fixture and the plastic shell. He chucked the other half of the pencil in the same way, pushing the first half of the pencil deeper into the device. With a hiss and a couple of sparks, the laser broke and Daisuke smiled, now simply strolling though the house, looking for his mother. Of course, he couldn't find anybody without having to dodge a few spike traps first, and reached the basement without even being out of breath.

"Hello?" He called into the depths of the catacombs, his voice echoing back.

"Down here, sweetie!" He heard his mother's voice reply and set his books down on the first step, heading down into the basement.

He arrived just in time to see Argentine nearly fall off of a ladder that was precariously perched against the side of a statue of some mostly-naked man made of marble. His mother of course quickly broke into hysterics about his safety, but mostly concentrated on reminding the former bad-guy that his job was to _fix_ _things_, not _break them._

"Mom, where's dad?" Daisue asked, watching the skeptical with disinterest. Things like this were common in his house these days.

"Kosuke? I think that he's researching things in the library, why?" Emiko asked, only using half of her maximum level of attention on her son.

"I just needed to ask him something. Thanks mom." Daisuke replied with a small smile and a wave. He knew that Emiko hadn't meant the upstairs library; that contained normal books that people wouldn't think anything of if they saw them. So, instead, he turned down a hall that lead to a different part of the catacombs in which _the_ library was held. It contained countless old books and scrolls, most of which would be worth a fortune if the Niwa's ever decided that they were going to put them on the back market. Things from simple innocent documents categorizing the books and pieces held in libraries and museums, to the stock lists of high-end black-market dealers. For some reason, nobody had ever figured out that these incriminating documents were missing, or if they had, they had never figured out it was the innocent appearing Niwa family that held them all.

It was among this library of stolen, rare or illegal documents that Daisuke found his father, bent over some piece of paper, studying diligently by lamplight.

"Hey, dad, I have something that I need to ask you." Daisuke said, pulling up the extra chair in the room and sitting on the opposite side of the table, looking his dad in the eye.

"What is it Daisuke?" Kosuke asked, looking up from his documents.

Daisuke could only read a few of the words upside down, and quickly deduced that they were I some other language that he wasn't fluid in. A possible out-of-country heist? No matter, he would find out about it when the time came. "Actually, I had a question about the Hikari, and the Agate Links."

"Yes? Something about it bothers you?" Kosuke's normally carefree and cheerful expression (the one that Daisuke had inherited) had changed into a much more serious face. He knew that his young son meant business.

"I don't know if you know the story behind the Agate Links or not… that all happened before you came back. But a girl named Menou Kurashina had been cursed by the artwork, and she was trapped inside the piece for over forty years. However, the Hikari didn't make it. Satoshi and Grandpa told me both told me that." A flicker of understanding passed over his father's face, and Daisuke waited patiently for his father to pick up where he left off.

"Hold on a moment…" Kosuke stood and browsed one of the shelves near them. He moved further toward the back and muttered an "Ah ha!" before coming back, dropping a heavy book on the table, dust flying from it's pages. "A catalogue of the art pieces left surviving after the Cultural Reform." He explained briefly, opening the old book and flipping through the pages. "Here, the Agate Links." Kosuke finally said, tapping the page he was looking at.

"It was made by a man called "Kantarou Kabiyuki". However, that was an alias for a woman whose real name was Minima Youshitaka. She made several works of art before she died; all of them necklaces or rings or something like that. The works were especially appealing to women and girls and many jewelers of the time tried to copy her style. None of the copies could match the real one, though. Many had described the art works as 'Captivating'." Kosuke explained, his eyes skimming over the text in the book.

"Sounds just like a Hikari artwork." Daisuke mumbled, his heart sinking. "So, that means that there's more than just one family whose art is going around stealing souls…"

"Not necessarily." Kosuke replied, flipping the page and reading some more of the description. "Minima's great-grandmother was a Hikari who married out of the family. The women of her family all had some degree of talent as artists, though it seems that Minima was the only one who could put life into her pieces."

"Are there any other distantly related Hikari family members?" Daisuke asked, his brow furrowing with concern. "I thought Satoshi was the last one."

"He is." Kosuke said, snapping the book shut. "There are no more Hikari that can host Krad. Most of the ones who married outside the family were plagued with bad luck, and their line died off within a couple of generations."

"The Hikari curse…" Daisuke muttered under his breath, thinking back to Satoshi's confession in the tower when they'd gone to rescue Risa Harada from Argentine. Not even he, the last of the Hikari, could escape the perilously short lifespan of his family. "How many of the other works are there left?"

"Not many. The cast-off Hikari relations didn't have nearly the amount of power to protect their artworks that the main-family did. The Agate Links was one of the few survivors from that period. Not even a quarter of the art works listed in this book have any sort of special power." Kosuke replied, tapping the binding of the book. "If the Cultural Reformation did anything good, it just made Dark's job just a little easier."

Daisuke and Kosuke sat in silence for a while, simply contemplating all the information. "Thanks dad. That helped."

"No problem Daisuke." Kosuke smiled, his carefree expression returning.

Daisuke waved over his shoulder as he left the library, collecting his school bag and heading upstairs. 'Well, at least we know that we won't have to worry about another Krad popping out of the wood works…'

"_Hmm, that is strange though. I'd never heard of side-branches of the Hikari family. I suppose that they're not powerful enough to warrant my attention… or Krad's."_ Dark thought, rolling the information around for examination. _"I don't suppose that the old Hikari were too happy that there were dissenters, so they probably disowned them a long time ago."_

'Probably. And I'll bet that's why Satoshi didn't care if we stole the Agate Links.' Daisuke agreed, stepping around the spike traps in the floor on the way to his room. "Anyway, it's time to get some homework done! I'll ask Riku to do something with me tomorrow when I see her at school."

"_You should have asked her today, moron!"_ Dark grumbled, instantly in a sour mood. _"Don't you know anything about maximizing the opportunities given to you?"_

Daisuke smacked himself in the forehead again, and shut down communication between himself and Dark in order to block out the aura of perverseness that was starting to build from his other half. "What am I going to do about him?" He mused vaguely, tossing his books on the bed and opening the window.

~*~*~*~*~

_He stood, suspended in a world that he faintly recognized. He realized that this had to be a dream; it couldn't be anything but! Even so, he was curious. For some reason he felt compelled to walk. He wasn't quite sure where he was going, or what it was that he was walking to, but he needed to go. Something important was waiting to be found._

_He found himself running, panting hard from the exertion. He had to find out! Suddenly, the weightlessness was gone and gravity had returned. As he touched down on the floor, the sound waves brought to life a scene around him, rippling into reality._

_He stood in a hallway with a high ceiling and pillars all around instead of walls. He kept walking, looking around at this strange place that he'd suddenly found himself in._

"_Daisuke…"_

_He turned toward the voice, and saw a familiar figure standing next to him. Dark wasn't looking back at Daisuke though, his normally cocky expression replaced with one of melancholy as he stared into the distance._

_No, not into the distance…_

_He followed the phantom's gaze and his eyes alighted on… _something_…_

_At first, it looked like a simple sheet draped over some sort of object. It was chained, though, as if the innocent white sheet held beneath it a terrible beast. The sheet rippled in a nonexistent breeze, and then it began to shrink, the chains clattering together and making a horribly loud sound in the stillness. The square figure soon became something smaller and more recognizably human in form, and that human form beneath the white sheet was struggling with more and more ferocity against the chains that bound it._

_Suddenly, a scream pierced the silence, and Daisuke fell to his knees, covering his ears. Then came a ripping sound, another mangled scream, and a singular black wing burst from the white cloth. Feathers scattered about the room and a dark red stain began to tarnish the whiteness of the sheet, starting from that wing. The creature beneath the sheet began clawing desperately at the sheet, tearing holes through it with every swipe._

_Dark began to walk toward the figure, and Daisuke began to panic. He tried to yell out to the Phantom Thief, to call him back to his side, but his voice would not come, restricted in his throat. Desperately, he tried to stand, to bring Dark back by force if necessary, but again he was stopped by some unknown force. Across the way, he could see Krad walking toward the struggling figure beneath the chains, the same blank melancholy look on his face._

_With one more ripping sound the white cloth lost it's hold and fell to the ground in shreds, revealing the monster beneath. It was vaguely human in form, though everything about it was black. A true, pure black with no other colors, a complete void. The creature had four wings, the two on its lower back slightly smaller than the pair sprouting from its shoulders. The creature rose as much as it could under the strain of the chains and moved its head slowly so that it was facing Daisuke._

_The creature seemed to sense his presence, even though its eyes were closed. With what seemed a deliberate slowness, it opened its eyes to look at Daisuke. Like the rest of its body, the eyes were a pure black except the irises, which were a solid pure white. Daisuke tried to look away from the monstrosity, but found himself captivated by it, unable to turn his head or move any part of his body, though his mind screamed over and over for his limbs to move._

_The creature continued to stare at him, and suddenly Daisuke felt as if he were falling into those white eyes. Neither Dark nor Krad tried to stop him as he was drawn to the creature. Only inches from its face now, he could see his own reflection in it's mirror-like eyes. Again, he was captivated, unable to even think of trying to get away now. The image he saw in the creature's eyes began to warp, and he saw himself transform into Dark, then simply fall out of his own body, into the abyss that was the creature._

_His chest burned and he tried desperately to scream. Why was he in such pain? He'd never known anything like this. His heart was breaking, torn from his body without remorse by some shapeless entity. He felt empty; as if something very dear and important had been taken from him, but he couldn't scream, only feel as his body burst into an unquenchable fire of pain_.

"AHH!" Daisuke screamed, falling out of his bed and landing on the floor with a loud _thump_! He lay on the floor tangled in his bed sheets, panting hard with a cold sweat creating a fine sheen on his body. When he had finally recovered enough to sit up, he looked out the window to see that the sky was only just turning a lighter shade of blue. Morning was approaching; the moon beginning it's decent as the stars started to disappear in the sky.

"_What the hell is the matter with you, Daisuke?"_ Dark asked, smothering a huge yawn. He had slept through the dream, completely unaware of what Daisuke had seen. _"You remember something last-minuet?"_

"No…" Daisuke whispered, working hard to keep his voice from shaking. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, sorting out some of the bed head. "No, it was just a bad dream."

"_Bad dream? You haven't had one of those since you were ten."_ Dark replied with a scoff, eager to get back to sleeping.

"I know. But this one… was really terrifying." Daisuke said, his voice a little stronger now, though he was still obviously shaken.

Dark was silent, curious and fully on alert now. _"What was your dream about?"_

"I… I think it was about you." Daisuke replied, recalling the dream. "You were there, and so was Krad and… Something chained down."

"_What was chained down?"_ Dark asked, his curiosity starting to turn to concern. Daisuke was too shaken up to notice the subtle difference though, so continued on.

"I don't really know what it was." He trailed off, the visions from the nightmare fast fading now. "It was a like a void… dark, but with white eyes that drew me in… I couldn't get away from it, Dark. It trapped me. And then I felt empty, like something that I couldn't replace had been taken from me."

"_That's really weird Daisuke. No more cereal for dinner for you." _Dark said with a laugh. The young tamer smiled absently, looking out the window.

"Yeah, I suppose."

"_Get back to sleep. School in the morning."_ Dark said quietly, and Daisuke nodded, crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over himself. The redhead mumbled something unintelligible before drifting off to sleep once more.

Dark, however, remained wide-awake, searching through the unconscious tamer's memories for the remnants of the nightmare that remained. What he saw had his proverbial heart stuttering to a stop as cold realization hit him.

Daisuke could see into his memories, that much had been made apparent by the dream. They were connected now in a way that he'd never been with any other tamer. How far would this merging go, he wondered? Then there was something else about Daisuke's dream that had disturbed him; not only could he see into his memories, but the boy had seen something that not even Dark was quite sure was real. The creature was undoubtedly The Black Wings in physical form… but that form had never existed in the first place. The life-giving process had been disturbed, that's why he and Krad had come into being.

What did it mean, then? Could Daisuke…? No! It was impossible.

A warm glow encased the sleeping figure on the bed, the red hair becoming a dark purple, the frame elongating slightly and becoming more defined in muscle tone. Dark sat up, opening his lavender eyes to stare out the window. He stood with only a whisper of fabric and opened the window, crouching through it and leaping out, landing with a soft _thump_ two stories down. It looked like it was finally time to get serious. His time, and Daisuke's, was running out.

* * *

OH NOE! What does it all mean? Extremely vague at the end, I know. But it'll all come in time, children. It'll all come in time... Next chapter we get to look a little at what our favorite little bluenette is doing. Yay Satoshi! As always, lemme know what you think. K'tnx!


End file.
